Lindsey Collen

Felicity Hand (Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona)

Ed. by Anna Hildegard Gagiano, University of Stellenbosch
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 7.2.3.03: South Africa and other Southern Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Helen Rachel Cousins (Birmingham Newman University), David Firth (University of Manchester)

Dates

Born 1948
Activity 1990-ongoing

Places

Born in South Africa
Active in Mauritius

Activities

Primary

Novelist

Other

Revolutionary, Activist
Teacher/ Professor

Resources

Collen's Works

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Thanks to the two Commonwealth Prizes that she has won for Best Book for the Africa region, in 1994 for

The Rape of Sita

and in 2005 for

Boy

, Lindsey Collen has become the best known Mauritian English language writer. Collen’s first novel,

There is a Tide

, was published in 1990 and since then she has written six more novels, five in English and one in Kreol, and is a regular contributor to several left-wing journals such as

New Internationalist

and

Red Pepper

Collen was born in Mqanduli near Umtata, Transkei, South Africa in 1948. Her father, a magistrate and an expert in native law, was posted in several different places in the Eastern Cape. As a child, she was fluent in English, Afrikaans and Xhosa, as she spoke English with her parents, Afrikaans with the neighbours, and Xhosa with

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2215 words

Citation: Hand, Felicity. "Lindsey Collen". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 August 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12828, accessed 06 May 2024.]

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